I have tended to think the non-design-based arguments for God’s existence are not taken seriously enough, and have defended them here in the past. But in the end I do not think they succeed. Anselm’s argument is a brilliant piece of reasoning, but it depends on a view of concepts that I do not share. If the very concept of the most perfect being requires that such a being exist, that must express an incoherence in the concept, not a necessity in reality.

Nor do I accept other arguments for God that I’ve toyed with here in the past: ibn Rushd’s First Explanation argument, or the related idea of God as value at the heart of reality. When we continue asking material explanations (what is this object made of, what is that “made of” itself made of, and so on), the explanations may take us down to quarks. When we get to “what are the quarks made of”, the answer seems difficult, but I have seen no reason to indicate it must be all one single substance, as ibn Rushd seemed to think it must be. And I think a similar logic goes for the other three Aristotelian explanations (aitia): it is not clear where explanations terminate, or even if they terminate, but there is no reason to postulate a single substance at the end. And so on value itself, while I do think it probably has a basis in actual existence, I would likely agree with a comment Ben made long ago that that existence has to do with the nature of humans, not with a divine source. I still have a great deal of respect for these arguments and find them profound and powerful, but in the end they do not convince me.

For all of this, though, I never call myself an “atheist”, as my grandfather did. To describe oneself as an “atheist” is to identify oneself with a particular community which I have no interest in belonging to. Certainly the snarky, arrogant, boorish behaviour of a Christopher Hitchens, let alone a Richard Dawkins, makes me eager to disassociate myself from such a group. That is not a sufficient point by itself, however; one should not judge any community by its worst members. I do not refuse to identify with Buddhism simply because of the existence of Wirathu.

The more salient reason: to identify as an atheist is to be hostile to “religion”, which I am not. I am a Buddhist, affiliated with a “religious” tradition that recognizes no God. (There are some Buddhisms, like Pure Land and Tiantai, whose practices and beliefs recognize a godlike entity as their focus. They are not my Buddhism. I have indeed found it helpful, as one Buddhist practice among many, to pray to a godlike being – but one who I don’t believe exists.)

And in many ways my identification with that “religion” is more important for me than the denial of God. That is not true for atheists. Even those atheists who proclaim a strong sympathy in Buddhism (like Sam Harris) do so while explicitly rejecting that in Buddhism which they take to be “religious”.

The attack on “religion” qua “religion” is an attack on tradition and history – since those are usually what constitute “religion”. It says nothing worth knowing comes from before the 18th century, and most knowledge of value comes well after that – most of it written in English.

It can also become an attack on self-cultivation. In the same teaching job where I grasped the seriousness of the problem of suffering, as a reason not to believe in God, I also gained more respect for Ecclesiastes’s grappling with the injustice of the world, and for the ways we could be improved by attempting to live up to biblical injunctions. The kinds of texts and practices typically called “religious” aim at making us better than we are, and that is something we desperately need, given all the problems with human nature. When we do not take our guidance from something larger than ourselves, we are much likelier to become self-absorbed brutes like Dawkins and Hitchens. I may meet the requirements for membership, but I have no desire to join their club.

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12 thoughts on “Disbelieving in God without being an atheist”

Thank you for this very interesting post, Amod. You raise many interesting issues and I hope you will consider developing your thoughts into an article (so that I can cite it officially on top of this blog post:-). Just a small question: It seems to me that the kind of god you deny the existence of is the god of rational theology (god as Primus movens, god as ultimate cause, god as omniscient and omnipotent etc.). Kumārila has shown (with partly overlapping arguments, e.g. in the case of the Primus movens, of suffering, of the ultimate cause) that this rational assumption in fact creates more problems that it can solve.

However, later Vaiṣṇava Mīmāṃsakas explored the possibility of an alternative concept of god. This was the god attained through worship and one was connected to Him through a loving relationship. Did He need to be the Primus movens etc.? No. Perhaps He was indeed omnipotent etc., but this did not need to be the case, since the loving relationship was independent of such qualities.

Long story short: Can we think of god as different than all you deny and as still being god? Can there be a god who is not the god of rational theology?

I think there could, yes; I don’t think it is impossible, whereas I do think an omnipotent omnibenevolent being is impossible given the state of the world. I just don’t have sufficient reason to believe there is such a god, either. I’d like to believe in one – it would be nice if I actually thought my nightly prayers to Mañjuśrī reached a being who was more than an ethically productive work of fiction. Unfortunately I’ve seen little reason to believe that there is.

Great post. You may find this “religion but not god” approach reasonably common among modern secular American Jewish people, though I suspect you know that!

This also reminded me that I should tell you: in the SF novel I’m currently drafting, the far-future human-and-AI civilization had once culled religion from their society/data, but later generations decided to recreate it with inspiration from secondary references… and built something around the First Explanation. “We’re not saying a god exists that can interact with the physical universe, we’re choosing to believe in a god that provides us with a common moral framework.”

Not that the religion is actually super-popular, but these things come and go :)

Re American Jews – yeah, some of my attitude probably comes from an American Jew, A.J. Jacobs. The Year of Living Biblically is a very Jewish book, in that he tries to follow biblical commandments irrespective of belief (and traditionalist Jews commend him for doing this with the Hebrew Bible, while traditionalist Christians are a little puzzled by it). And even without believing, he finds himself a better person for engaging in some of the prescribed behaviours, especially wearing white and refraining from swearing.

Maybe you do believe in God, but not the personal God as depicted in many faiths. While most Buddhists don’t believe in God, the Buddha was said to believe in gods. Seems like semantics are at play here, but perhaps we can acknowledge there is some great underground river that no one can dam up and no one can stop.

If one follows the account of the traditional Tipiṭaka texts (which is a big if, but overall, they’re still probably the best record we’ve got), the Buddha coexisted with gods who appeared to him on earth. But the striking thing is that they bow down to him: at one point the king of the gods even comes down to help the Buddha with his laundry.

Even for gods of that lower calibre, though, I don’t have particular reason to believe that they exist.

“it doesn’t take a quantum leap to see a big bang become fundamental interacting forces then galaxies and evolutions, we are part of this continuum in representing qualia/value–that part of the universe cosmos which sees itself”…

I do call myself an atheist even though I agree with everything you wrote here. It may help that I had been an atheist for over 25 years before encountering New Atheism, the “Skeptic” community, or any other narrow minded atheist groups, and I had long since outgrown the antitheism/anti-religious feeling I had during my first few years of atheism.

I guess I’m comfortable with the label since I’ve used it only for my worldview and not for any community I’ve been part of: if I’m honest about what my religious community is, I’d have to say Morris dancers and other folkies (with occasional visits to Unitarian-Universalism).

I think there may be another reason for you not to call yourself an atheist: atheism in the western sense emerges from Christianity, & makes no sense apart from it. It’s a sort of Christian heresy. If you are a Buddhist, there’s no reason at all to play that game or get involved. In short — I’m not sure you *do* meet the requirements for membership, because you don’t really share the grammar.

I agree. When Christian consider differences between Christianity and Buddhism, they invariably focus on whether or not Buddhism accommodates a belief in god. But that is a question that reflects Christian priorities.

I think that the best Buddhist response is that Buddhism doesn’t put much put very much emphasis on god or no god but views the bigger difference as being the Christian belief in a self or soul.

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